I Am a Girl!

Every 13-year-old girl dreams of that nice, but hard-to-get, boy. And Joppe is no different, consulting her friend on how to ask Brian out. But just how should she tell him that she was born a boy?

From a very early age, Joppe—then still called Jop—liked to wear dresses and wigs and play with Barbie dolls. Jop also preferred to be addressed as a "she” rather than a “he.” Halfway through the last year of elementary school, she decided to ask her classmates to consider her a girl from then on. All things considered, this went remarkably smoothly: from that moment on, she just started getting changed with the girls. At her new school, she preempted problems by telling everyone right away. “It really isn’t a huge problem,” she says. “It doesn't dominate your life, although you are confronted by it every day.” With a striking amount of self-confidence, Joppe explains how puberty blockers and female hormones work and how she copes with her emotions.

Credits

15 min

color

DCP

Director

Susan Koenen

Production

Albert Klein Haneveld / Hollandse Helden

Cinematography

Reinout Steenhuizen

Editing

Susan Koenen, Denise Janzee

Sound

Bouwe Mulder

Created with Sketch.Show all credits

Related films

All of Me

Susan Koenen

2012

Diede and Emma share everything with each other. Everything? Well, almost everything. Because Diede has a secret: she's clairvoyant.
…

Mookie

Neske Beks

2012

Welcome to the world of nine-year-old Mookie, secret agent by trade. He catches the crooks everywhere, even in the hospital.…